Down to the seas again

(by Hilary)

It's now been over a year since we returned from our cruise last summer, and it's now time for a repeat trip out to the Ocean Observatories Initiative's Irminger Sea array to continue our research investigating the biological carbon pump and its role in ocean carbon cycling in the subpolar North Atlantic. The OOI team makes this trip every year to recover the instrumentation deployed the previous summer and deploy a new set of instrumentation to collect data over the coming year, and our research group will be joining the cruise now for a second time.

Over the past year, the instrumentation we deployed last June has weathered intense storms and even a visit from some springtime bergy bits, collecting data all the while about the oceanographic conditions in the region.

View of a bergy bit floating past the OOI array surface mooring on April 2. This photo was captured by the camera mounted on the mooring instrument frame, visible in the foreground.

We've spent much of the past year analyzing data being sent back in real time by the gliders, autonomous underwater vehicles, we deployed last June. All of the moorings deployed last year are still out at sea waiting for our cruise to pick them up, but our project glider was recovered early last month, after a successful mission improving the calibration of the oxygen sensors at the array and over a full year spent at sea.

The OOI glider outfitted to collect oxygen measurements in air as well as seawater suspended in midair off the side of the ship while being recovered in June.

Our research team has also experienced lots of exciting changes in the past year. Our stalwart bloggers from last year, Lucy Wanzer and Emma Jackman, have both graduated from Wellesley and are off on their next adventures - Emma applying her lab skills and safety training in a job managing hazardous waste in the Boston area, and Lucy setting off for a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship where she will learn about small boats in island communities around the world.

Emma (left), Hilary (center), and Lucy (right) in front of the research posters that Emma and Lucy presented last summer. 

I will be the one returning face from our project's seagoing team last year, though with changes for me as well as I have just moved from Wellesley to a new job as an assistant professor at Boston College. New joining the team this year are Thanda Newkirk and Claire Hayhow, both rising juniors majoring in Environmental Studies at Wellesley, and Shawnee Traylor, a first year PhD student in Roo Nicholson's lab in the WHOI-MIT joint program. Thanda, Claire, and Shawnee will be collecting data on our cruise to help us better understand marine biogeochemistry in the North Atlantic and calibrate the many sensors that the Ocean Observatories Initiative deploys in the Irminger Sea. They will also be leading this year's blogging effort, so follow along to hear all about our research and their experience conducting science at sea!